We all know I’m a sucker for a house cover and shame on me because Megan Collins has now fooled me twice with one. I’d like to WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
We all know I’m a sucker for a house cover and shame on me because Megan Collins has now fooled me twice with one. I’d like to say after two fails with this author I’ll be passing her up in the future, but I’m an idiot so give me another house on the front and I’ll probably be first in line.
The story here revolves around the brutal murder of Julia’s husband (and Sienna’s brother) Jason’s boss. Found in his own yard stabbed, suffocated and with his lips sewn shut this has the entire town on edge . . . and has Jason as the police’s #1 suspect.
And then things just become a mess beginning with the coppers telling Julia and Sienna to keep their nose out of things, which promptly leads to . . .
You then get some convoluted back story thrown in about a dude from the past who killed Jason and Sienna’s parents as a drunk driver, a coma, multiple sexual harassment/assault subplots and a teenage son who has become distant from his mother. Mess.
Tip to authors: Maybe tell your readers to throw every bit of common sense out of the window or do a teensie lil’ bit of research about how policing, brain injuries and/or medically induced comas work. Also? Maybe don’t have someone be known for their sewing skills if you don’t want us to know the whodunit immediately and then spend the remainder of our reading experience pissed off for wasting our time through hundreds of additional pages. ...more
Before I wind up deterring any of you from reading Christina Henry’s stuff, let me say that Alice, Lost Boy and The Girl in Red were all huge winners Before I wind up deterring any of you from reading Christina Henry’s stuff, let me say that Alice, Lost Boy and The Girl in Red were all huge winners for me and I do not hesitate to recommend them to anyone looking for a dark retelling of a familiar tale. This reimagining of Rebecca, however????
Man, it sucks to write that, but I’m nothing if not honest in my opinion. I’ve read offerings by Nick Cutter, Patrick Lestewka and Craig Da
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Man, it sucks to write that, but I’m nothing if not honest in my opinion. I’ve read offerings by Nick Cutter, Patrick Lestewka and Craig Davidson and none have been a mess like this. The story here is about a husband, wife and their young son who are moving into a new build in what is promised to be an up-and-coming subdivision. Immediately upon arrival they find they may have purchased a lemon, but hey no problem!
Okay, this had some potential. I mean as soon as you give me a father who has been put on some sort of administrative leave who moves out to the middle of nowhere vibes with the fam it calls to mind a certain other horror story with a real Father of the Year nominee . . . .
Throw in a little side of Monster House and it could have been #nomnomnomnomnom. But Cutter blows his load SUPER early and gives away what should have been a twisty twist at the end. Not to mention the narrative should have strictly been Trent’s up to that point for this to truly work because absolutely no time was spent trying to develop the wife or son characters. Cutter is still Cutter and doesn’t hold back on the gross-out moments whatsoever, but the storytelling itself is pretty thin. This either needed to be cut down to a super shorty short or sent back for a complete re-write and another hundred pages added to fix all the problems.
1.5 Stars and rounding up because I have been a fan in the past (just maybe don't do any more collabs)...more
I understand that horror is not his typical bag and mad props to him for venturing into a new genre, but oooooooof was this not great.
The story here is about Richard, a boy who has come to live with his aunt and uncle after his parents’ deaths. He’s unliked by most of his classmates and a bully to boot. Everyone aside from Tom, that is, another unfortunate member of the same caste of students Richard belongs to. When Tom goes missing, it is Richard who is blamed – especially given the fantastical story of Tom being eaten by a public payphone. And when another student Jack never arrives at home Richard is once again the last to have known his whereabouts leaving the police with no choice but to send him to lockdown.
So that’s all I’m going to give as far as synopsis go. Just know for me the first 2/3 of this book read VERY young adult (aside from the foul language). Part 2 attempts to explain the reasoning why, but it was waaaaaaay too late after slogging through such horrible writing and then Part 3 takes another turn. Hopefully others will like this more than I did, but eesh it’s a 1 Star for me.
Advanced copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ...more
(That’s supposed to be a chef’s kiss, but I’m thinking Snoop may be doing summin’ else.)
To me it’s like the author knew how she wanted this one to end too and just ended up throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the plot in order to make the grand finale happen.
Got any good haunted house recommendations? I’ll take ‘em! (The Night House, The September House, and A Haunting on the Hill need not apply. I already read and didn’t like any of them.)
Oof. I’ll give the author credit for being ballsy enough to take on the house swap trope a la The Holiday, but she had to know how much taking on a hoOof. I’ll give the author credit for being ballsy enough to take on the house swap trope a la The Holiday, but she had to know how much taking on a holiday favorite would open her up for criticism. Here’s a brief list of things I hated:
1. Zero plot aside from the borrowed trope.
2. Well there were pitiful attempts like a mother with Alzheimer’s and a son who was more than willing to ignore her with one of the couples and a controlling family with a controlling girlfriend whose warning signs the female lead was more than willing to ignore with the other couple.
3. Carys. *vomit emojis forever*
4. Kitchen sink Covid hobbies like bullet journaling and “plant mom life” (*shudder*) that added nothing to the nonexistent story.
5. Instabanging but no chemistry.
6. Speaking of - waaaaay too graphic sex for unsuspecting victims who simply fall for all cartoony cover holiday books.
7. A Jewish character just for the sake of trying to be inclusive? I mean they threw a one day “Chanukah” booze party but included zero religious or food or gift traditions??? Don’t even bother with that half-assery.
8. Two weeks and these idjits are upending their entire lives for each other? Especially when they both seem to be pretty co-dependent to begin with and are trying to break the habit.
The problem is he’s just not a very good writer and he literally has zero original ideas. I know, I know, the old saying is that there are no more original ideas, but this fella has made a career out of being a copycat. From regurging out retellings of The Amityville Horror and Rosemary’s Baby and jumping on the bandwagon of final girl stories, I keep picking his new releases up expecting him to finally write something of his own. But sadly that once again was not to happen. This was an obvious shout out to Rear Window, which just so happens to be my favorite film of all time (as well as a super shorty short story It Had To Be Murder). I’m telling you I loooooooove modernizations and can’t get enough. Sadly, Sager here opted to make a copy of a copy and really went in with full gusto on The Woman in the Window with a boozehound unreliable narrator who would have had to have her stomach pumped by noon on the daily. And then I remembered even that has already been done (and better) . . . .
This entire thing was problematic. From the main character having no personality whatsoever aside from being a drunk, to the nearly plagiaristic scenes (example below):
As I bring my gaze back toward the house, sliding it past the back patio strewn with dead leaves and the bare trees on the lakeshore that they’ve fallen from, I notice something on the Royces’ dock. A person. But not just any person. Tom. He stands at the end of the dock, spine as straight as a steel beam. In his hands are a pair of binoculars, aimed at this side of the lake. And at me.
To the non-existent pacing and story development where nearly nothing happened until the 70% mark and then fizzled right back out by 80% - this was a real dud. But you know I’ll read his next book because . . . .
Her book club selections will be the death of me! I think I’ve washed my hands of her recommendations and then she drops a 5 Star bomb like The Paper Palace and I can’t stop myself from clicking “request” at the library.
So this is a story about the longest con in the history of cons where some broad befriends a rich bitch in order to steal her husband. Rather than simply gussying herself up and putting her puss on a platter, though, she opts to present herself as a non-threatening homely uggo and eventually become his secretary (JFC why?????) to win “her man” and get the lifestyle she feels she deserves. And also tie herself down via a “whoopsie” pregnancy because yay babies (????). The only thing I can say about this is . . . .
My notes consist of things like “this is turrrrible” and “good lord” and “will it ever get better?” Liv Constantine’s style reminds me of that old campfire game where one person tells the first sentence of a story and then everyone takes a turn doing the same. Like the previous selection by them, this one seemed to have no real direction and they just tried to one up each other every other chapter (or however they write) until the big twist. It was a total snoozefest, waaaaaaay too long and absolutely stupid. This is two days and two Reese’s picks in a row that I’m 1 Starring. Will I ever be able to climb out of this rabbit hole???? Will this book slump ever end???? Will it stop being 75 degrees in December???? Maybe that’s the problem . . . . .
Seems once again I’m a bit of a wrongreader here and didn’t fall over myself about this recent Reese’s Book Club selection like all the other2.5 Stars
Seems once again I’m a bit of a wrongreader here and didn’t fall over myself about this recent Reese’s Book Club selection like all the other horny housewives did. Mainly due to the fact that you can’t write about stupid shit such as clothing like this . . . .
Draped in a long-sleeve paisley maxidress plunging to her navel (vintage Dior) and shoulder-skimming beaded earrings (Nairobi street market) …
In suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch detail, but then gloss over the “before” section where two high schoolers meet, bang for a week in a drug addled and self-harm stupor and yet have hardly any pages written about all that.
So the story here is Eva and Shane met as mentioned directly above and then 15 years went by without them ever speaking. It’s hinted that he “broke a promise” which, of course, takes an eternity to ever get around to disclosing and winds up being a trope contained in approximately 112% of all romance novels that could have been wrapped up had the two main characters taken Khalid’s sage advice of . . . .
But I digress and back to the plot. Eva and Shane have both grown up to be successful writers. He’s a Colson Whitehead literary sort, she writes “supermarket checkout porn.” They wind up at a black author book convention where the reader learns that they have both spent their careers writing about the other and eventually they commence the re-banging. Then stuff and things happen and in the end it was just aiiiiiight for me.
I think I need to lower my expectations or fight the FOMO when it comes to Reese’s picks. While I really loved Such a Fun Age, most of her choices seem to miss the mark a bit for me. Most likely because when I see the words “Book Club” my brain wants to go in that Colson Whitehead type of direction or at least be a story that makes you think about things like social issues, race, wealth, bias, etc. all wrapped up in an easy-to-read format as with Such a Fun Age. I read a lot of smut and included in that has been a handful of literary porn too. At the end of the day this was simply a romance that could have used A LOT more pages to fill in the details in what became a very disjointed now/then narrative for me.
Sometimes when you are a hot commodity like Swanson has become the powers that be push for moremoremoremoremore and you just don’t have it left in the tank so you barf out a hot mess and slap a $20.00 price tag on a giant pile of turds.
So what didn’t work for me with this latest release? Well – EV.ER.Y.THANG. First off, it was only about 200 pages and yet the dramatic reenactment of me reading it would look something like this . . . .
Second, it was soooooooooooooo fucking boring. Was this started as a short story? I mean if it had been 30-50 pages in some sort of anthology maybe I wouldn’t have hated it so much. But oh my lord all the nothing going on was snoozing me the eff out. And the big reveal? That sucker was more run down and tired than I am. I’m also usually all on board with unlikeable/despicable characters, but again there was nothing here. Girl bangs strange on her bachelorette weekend, ignores the warning signs that her husband-to-be just ain’t all there with his love at first sight and no sense of humor and making all the decisions, and then when shit hits the fan and she should be doing this . . . . .
She does things like goes back to make sure she closed the door. I just can’t handle that type of stupid unless it’s a movie where some sorority girl’s big boobies are bouncing around while she runs directly into the serial killer while wearing only her underwear.
Do yourself a favor – read everything else by Peter Swanson and just pretend this one doesn’t exist. ...more
Has been pretty good for me. I didn’t request allllllll of the books, but anything that perked my ears up in interest definitely got put on hold at my local library and I’ve been reading them pretty much as soon as my turn comes up. Everywhere You Don’t Belong was presented as a coming of age story set in the South Side of Chicago told by a young, male, black protagonist and . . . . .
Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this much at all. There were brief moments of levity in this tale as the blurb promised, but the writing style was definitely not my idea of a good time. Dialogue heavy with little to no punctuation, cardboard cutout characters with no depth and a schizophrenic attempt at covering everything without really committing to diving deeper into anything of any importance made for a not great time. Another reviewer said this must be what it feels like to have a stroke and that made me chuckle because uhhhhhh yeah. The closest comparison I can make with regard to the delivery and approach to this was the oh-so-godawful Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff. At least this one earned more than 1 Star from me!
(Please don’t troll me and tell me I’m a wrongreader – I like what I like and I’m sure many others will voice the same complaints I am.)
Not to mention at this point in the suckage that has been both the first year of the Roaring 20s as well as the first few weeks of this new year I really wasn’t in the mood for such a reiteration of the current state of America. Reminders of racial injustices or books that seem very “present” (for lack of a better term) are one thing, but when a snippet featuring a group of Proud Boy types came into the picture mere days after our Capitol was raided, well that had me saying . . . .
I was looking for a bit of an escape (hence the being interested in reading a coming-of-age story with a darkly humorous lean to it). If you are of a more sensitive nature than myself, you may find that you want to take cover in a bunker or something after reliving our reality via this fiction....more
A journey via giffery of a rabbit hole I fell into this past Spring.
You see, a few months into lockdown I didn’t realize it was going to be the new nA journey via giffery of a rabbit hole I fell into this past Spring.
You see, a few months into lockdown I didn’t realize it was going to be the new normal and that no one would ever leave their house ever again. I was about eleventy trillion reviews behind for the year and my eyeballs were constantly on fire from the amout of books I was reading. I had finally reached the point where I was . . . . .
Since desperate times call for desperate measures, I finally attempted to figure out how to work the smart T.V. in order to watch all of the romantic comedies on the ol’ . . . . .
Okay, so I didn’t know any sort of backstory about this series before viewing the film. All I knew was that I had dubbed it “attractive young white people kissing” because 99.99999% of the scenes were along these lines . . . .
Especially these never-ending varieties – Like 50 Shades or Dusty. Oh my lord. All these motherfuckers needed someone to send half the pages to the shredder. Apparently there was a lot of controversy about this one, but I could really give a shit about any of that and am definitely not going to look into it any further. My low rating comes from the endless loop of repeating the same cycle with not much of a plot to speak of for 600 G.D. pages.
And then I read the second one. I need help....more
Let’s keep this one short and sweet. This was another book that was on my TBR for eternitFind all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
Let’s keep this one short and sweet. This was another book that was on my TBR for eternity. It got placed there due to my reaction to It’s Kind of a Funny Story. It finally made it to the currently reading stack (late, naturally) when I attempted to check out a copy for Young Adult Week. Good news is, I read it in a couple of hours. Bad news is, it was terrible. Lacking in character development and relying on the clichés that all boys are oversexed perverts who are lucky they haven’t gone blind despite their masturbatory tendencies and all girls are dumb sluts looking for validation from the nearest penis, it was clear I was pulling a Sergeant Murtaugh because I was most definitely “too old for this shit.” However, like so many things of late there’s a different version of this story that is pretty great . . . .
You ever have the experience when you run into an acquaintance at the grocery store or inFind all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
You ever have the experience when you run into an acquaintance at the grocery store or in an elevator or a parking lot or some other random public place and ask what you feel is a pretty benign question like “how’s it going?” only to have that person fucking UNLEASH their life on you and tell you all about their cheating husband and demise of their marriage and you’re all like . . . .
Or you respond with something like “we got a new cat” because you don’t know how to communicate like a normal human to begin with and especially when you get word vomit all over you? Yeah, that’s what reading this book was like.
So, here are the things I knew about this one before I started:
1. It was all over Instagram;
2. It was a revenge story; and
3. It took place in the penis of America Florida during an oncoming hurricane.
What I didn’t know was that this author had a cheating spouse and decided to put pen to paper in order to work out her feelings. Ummmmm, maybe she should have chosen therapy instead or . . . .
No, Nic. It’s “RIDICULOUS™.” But I love some trashy Lifetime shit every once in a while so I was totally game to give this one a shot. Unfortunately, it lost me by the 13% mark when our betrayed leading lady uttered the phrase:
I’ve mentioned enough times to turn the dead horse into nothing but a pulpy mess that TaFind all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
I’ve mentioned enough times to turn the dead horse into nothing but a pulpy mess that Tarryn Fisher is a bit of a hit or miss author for me. That being said, she’s one of the only authors the pornbrary doesn’t stock on the regular so I know I will be one-clicking whatever her new release is the day it comes out. Such was the case with Fuck Marriage both for the aforementioned pulpy horse reasons, as well as because I thought this was going to be a revenge story. However, when I began reading I discovered the "revenge" in question was going to be in the form of a cheated on divorcee who seeks revenge on her ex/his new fiancé by . . . . banging him???? That’s unfortunate. I think the rational thing for a woman in that position to do would be double homicide, but hey I’m not the writer. I reset my sights and prepared myself for a super soap opera-ish good time. And that was 100% okay, because . . . .
Seriously. WTF happened? Did some bills need to get paid so this thing had to be released pronto? Did someone else write it? (For real, that’s what it seems and if that is the case, Dear Tarryn Fisher: Your co-writer is turrrrrrrrrrrrible at his (or her, but my Spidey Senses tell me it might have been a him) job.) I’ll still be first in line when The Wives comes out later this year, but this one?????
Soooooo what can I say about The Wife Between Us? Well, I can start with the fact that this ARC has probably been on my Kindle for a year and a half, but I actively avoided it after seeing more and more mediocre ratings from friends. I decided to finally give it a go after this duo’s second release began inundating my nerd feeds just like this one had. While reading the first 40% I kept thinking I liked it better the first time I read it when it was called The Girl on the Train, which isn’t saying much . . . . .
And then some stuff that was mentioned waaaaaaay early on ended up getting mentioned again and it was pretty clear that at least one of the authors was like . . . . .
I think I have a problem with writing teams when it comes to thrillers. The characters don’t ever seem to get fleshed out, the timeline is consistently wonky, what you are lead to believe are important details either get forgotten for hundreds of pages or thrown by the wayside entirely and the twists and turns become a game of “anything you can do I can do better” which results in a final Kelly and Mitchell reaction of . . . .
I already wasted my time reading this, so that's pretty much all you're going to get aside from mentioning the shock and awe twist at the e
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I already wasted my time reading this, so that's pretty much all you're going to get aside from mentioning the shock and awe twist at the end? Stupid. And gross. Easily the worst thing I've read so far this year....more
You know what makes me want to punch someone in the throat more than anything in the universe? When the only words they can come up with during an argument are “wow” or “whatever.” The fact that this is pretty much the only response either of the two main characters in this book have to anything that offends them did not bode well for my enjoyment. Not to mention the laundry list of other things like . . .
1. I found Shatter Me to be okay, but I remember Mafi being quite the wordsmith. Definitely not the case here.
2. The female lead’s family has moved like a dozen times in her life – but apparently only to super racist uggo places (even before 9/11 took place which made uggos even more uggo) and yet don’t really have any money or anything to show for it so why move all the time???
3. If you want to argue that they weren’t poor – IT FLAT OUT SAYS THE OLDER BROTHER IS DYSLEXIC AND THEY COULDN’T AFFORD A TUTOR SO THE MC HAD TO “TEACH” HIM NOT TO BE DYSLEXIC ANYMORE . . . when they were middle schoolers. I can’t even talk about this topic further for fear my brain will explode.
4. How many teenage movies can be ripped off in one book? Let me count the ways – girl makes her own creations via altering thrift store finds à la Pretty In Pink and since there is no such thing as too much John Hughes (except somehow there is now because a subset of people are super offended by everything I thought was awesome when I was a teenager) we also have the unexpected show up by dream boy in his car à la Sixteen Candles and no clichéd story would be complete without every problem being solved via a breakdancing battle like the Step Up franchise has taught us.
5. While we’re on the subject of things that offend the younger generation – there are multiple occurrences of “being stopped with a kiss” so see Argument #4 above and the old lady generation teenie bopper movie stuff that now pisses people off as to my confusion.
6. These children DON’T EVEN KNOW EACH OTHER. Now I know that’s the mom in me speaking, but JFC I’d rather have the instalove than this supposed “deep” crap when he doesn’t even know she has a brother and she’s unaware he’s the star of the basketball team. Talk about self-absorbed douchebags.
7. Not everything is racist. Or there can be more than one reason. The dude in class who is disgusting and tells her he “sees nothing” when he looks at her (or probably any other random student) could have a multitude of reasons – they’re not on the same social plane as he is, they’re fat, ugly, gay, poor, rich, etc., etc., etc. The forest is missed for the trees when it comes to pointing out that individuals like him are AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWFUL people – and yes maybe blatantly racist as well because they are pigs – but a lot of these kids were probably just assholes and thought she was a bitch because she acted like a bitch all the time and could have given a rip about her heritage.
8. Our MC wears hijab, but basically for a fashion statement. Wear what you want to wear, but good grief don’t get peeved when a classmate calls you out for conduct unbecoming.
I won’t be responding to any comments telling me I’m wrong on this one because (1) I’m well aware and (2) I’m sure the majority of those statements will be coming from children and Homey don’t play that. Before you get all up in arms, please note this is actual footage of me typing this review . . . .
Okay, this one DID. NOT. stand the test of time. Released in 1975, Forever … topped the Banned Books charts due to its direct approach to teenagers having sexual relationships. Sadly it did not weather well. From the abuse of ellipses (and coming from me you KNOW there were a lot, because I myself am a fan), to the terrible writing, to the leading male that would have modern-day girls declaring #metoo, to the girl who wanted “forever” – only to want to mack on the next available dude the moment her true love was not close by, to the bizarro addition of a suicidal friend storyline – all being presented by characters with absolutely ZERO dimension.
Once upon a time this was a coveted little book that many of us weren’t allowed to read – much like Flowers in the Attic. Shelby and I cracked ourselves up last night talking about how these were verboten . . . and yet we were totally stealing the ongoing saga of Lucky Santangelo off our momma’s nightstands like sneaky bastards every chance we got. Back in the day Young Kelly might have found this super smexy. Old Kelly did not and will just go back to what she’s good at . . . .
I believe this was a “if you like this, you may like this” library software recommendation. I instantly requested it for the cover alone. Then I took a peek at the synopsis and was reminded of another story . . . .
You know, once you start seeing things like that they just shine like beacons.
Then there was the fact that the female lead lived an hour outside of London, but knew absolutely nothing about the city other than Trafalgar Square. Seriously? I mean I’m as hermity as they come, but I still made sure to make the drive in order to putz around Chicago occasionally when I lived in Illinois. This was followed by the instaloviest of all love where our film star leading male decides after about 17.4 seconds to stay with the girl he pretty much just met followed by asking her to move in with him. Buuuuuuuut he makes sure he takes all the jobs there are to take and flirt with all the girls because that’s part of the job and then she makes sure to be super offended by the part of the job that is actually part of the job and they are both just horrible and have the emotional development of about an 11-year old and good lord I can’t believe this is A SERIES?!?!?!?! Yeesh. I’m also 100% blown away that this was not self-pubbed. The characters, plot, pacing, ALL of it was just awful....more
Kelly (and the Book Boar)
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